Advocates for books that matter.

Talking to My Daughter about the Economy: Or, How Capitalism Works--And How It Fails

By Yanis Varoufakis

"Varoufakis [promises] to explain economics in a language that everyone can understand, in place of the jargon- infested pseudo-scientific language of mainstream economics....Varoufakis comes up with a vivid comparison between money supply and the market in cigarettes in a German prisoner-of-war camp to explain inflation, deflation and interest rates, in terms any teenager – or adult – will understand . . . Varoufakis does equip his readers with the beginnings of a new language, and punctures myth after myth" — Anna Minton, The Guardian

The Last Lobster: Boom or Bust for Maine's Greatest Fishery?

By Christoher White

"In this illuminating volume, White sets out to capture the look and feel of traditional Maine lobster villages [...] White conveys the significance of lobsters to people all over the world in this enjoyable sojourn with the lobster folk."—Publisher's Weekly

"An in-depth look at the state’s most significant fishery [...] Lobsters are intrinsically linked to the soul of Maine, and White’s thoughtful chronicle gives both the highly desired marine crustaceans and the people who seek them their due."—Booklist

“Jumping aboard lobster boats and heading to sea, White (The Melting World: A Journey Across America’s Vanishing Glaciers, 2013, etc.) returns with an affecting report on the way humans have mismanaged marine resources. … A solid demonstration of why those who have a taste for lobster rolls better eat up while they can.” —Kirkus

Not The Girls You're Looking For by Aminah Mae Safi

“Engaging and unexpected, voice-y and full of verve, this a whip-smart swan dive into all the messiness of best friendships and new romance, fitting in and growing up.”--Katie Cotugno, New York Times-bestselling author of How to Love

“An intense, emotional debut about finding one's place in the world and throwing off labels applied by other people.”--Jodi Meadows, author of Before She Ignites

“Lulu Saad is exactly the girl YA fiction has been looking for: a fearless and beautiful Arab-American Muslim ready to take the world by storm. Sparkling with humor, wit and vulnerability, Safi's debut will make you laugh and cry.” --Tanaz Bhathena, author of A Girl Like That

"Fiercely unapologetic and unapologetically fierce. This is exactly the kind of bold, messy, girl-driven, friendship-centric narrative that I have indeed been looking for."--Laurie Elizabeth Flynn, author of Firsts

“A sexy, multifaceted and beautifully complicated debut for anyone who has ever struggled with friendships, religion, and love. A must-read!” --Nisha Sharma, author of My So-Called Bollywood Life

"Deftly written and darkly funny, this is an unflinching portrayal of what it’s like to be a girl who refuses to be boxed in. Lulu and her friends are fierce, flawed, feminist, and full of heart – not to mention utterly unforgettable." --Katy Upperman, author of Kissing Max Holden

"Not the Girls You're looking For are exactly the girls you're rooting for. Lulu is fierce, loyal, and a main character you won't soon forget. An honest slice of teen life from a teen character you need to know." --Sara Farizan, author of If You Could Be Mine

A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety

"Donald Hall writes about love and loss and art and home in a manner so essential and direct it’s as if he’s put the full force of his life on the page. There are very few perfect books and A Carnival of Losses is one of them.”—Ann Patchett

My Plain Jane

By Jodi Meadows, Cynthia Hand and Brodi Ashton

★ “Holds all the flavor of a juicy period novel yet with the addition of numerous, witty asides. Full of wry humor and laugh-out-loud commentary. The authors’ affection for their source material is abundantly clear in this clever, romantic farce.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

★ “A delightfully deadpan deconstruction of a Gothic novel, with a ghost almost no one can see providing the commentary. Marvelously self-aware and almost too clever for its own good.” — Booklist (starred review)

★ “A madcap story of ghosts, possession, revenge, and murder. Humorously blends fact with fiction and offers a gentler, more hopeful outcome for Charlotte, her siblings, and her heroine.” — School Library Journal (starred review)

“Reader, it delighted. A fun, supernatural mashup of different literary novels that shines on its own merit.” — Kirkus Reviews

Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food

"In the past couple of decades, scientific research has shed unprecedented light on why we eat what we eat. This engaging and accessible account by a leading neuroscientist has something for everyone: consumers trying to make their way through the supermarket, parents worried about their children’s fads and fancies, and all of us who are curious about the causes underlying the dozens of food choices we make every day."-- Rachel Laudan, author of Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History

The Burning House: Jim Crow and the Making of Modern America by Anders Walker

"An absolutely first-rate and blazingly original work of scholarship. Walker's sagacious and path-breaking analysis will be lauded and embraced by scholars in multiple disciplines."—David J. Garrow, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Bearing the Cross and Rising Star

“Highly original and made vivid by close readings of both well-known and little-known texts, The Burning House traces the emergence of ‘Southern pluralist views’ that ‘respected diversity and also tolerated inequality.’”— Werner Sollors, Harvard University

"Beautifully written and well researched, The Burning House examines Jim Crow through the lenses of culture, community and intellectual history and makes an invaluable contribution to studies of race and American history."—Tomiko Brown-Nagin, author of the Bancroft prize-winning Courage to Dissent

The Language of the Game: How to Understand Soccer by Laurent Dubois

"When I want to explain the sublime creation that is soccer, I will hand out this gorgeous tome. Laurent Dubois comes to the game by way of politics, history, and true love. His book is eloquent, erudite and delightful company."―Franklin Foer, author of How Soccer Explains the World

Free the Beaches: The Story of Ned Coll and the Battle for America’s Most Exclusive Shoreline

By Andrew W. Kahrl

“This is a remarkable story about creative resistance to inequality--and about the ways that wealth and privilege have helped rob so many of a necessary connection to the natural world. It will make you angry, and hopefully it will make you active.”—Bill McKibben, author of Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

“This impressively researched, eloquently written, and artfully constructed book is very important reading for anyone interested in understanding the roots of inequality in the northeast and the nation.”—Lily Geismer, author of Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party

"An illuminating and damning account of power and privilege in late twentieth-century America."—Colin Fisher, author of Urban Green: Nature, Recreation, and the Working Class in Industrial Chicago

Quakeland: On the Road to America's Next Devastating Earthquake by Kathryn Miles

“[Kathryn Miles] will inspire you to explore, enjoy, and protect the planet.”—Sierra Magazine

“Quakeland is everything a popular science book should be: well-researched, anecdotal, sometimes humorous, and easily understood.”—Shelf Awareness

“Engrossing, timely, thoroughly researched… Smart, compelling, and fearless in its embrace of science, Quakeland is full of fascinating people imparting big truths. We ignore their knowledge at our peril.”—Booklist

Before She Ignites by Jodi Meadows

“A fully realized fantasy world complete with dragons, treachery, and flawed characters discovering their courage. I couldn’t put it down!” —C. J. Redwine, New York Times bestselling author of The Shadow Queen

“Meadows portrays acutely Mira’s insecurities about not living up to the demands of her station or to her mother’s expectations…while exploring issues of inclusivity and discrimination. Fans of Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series or Julie Kagawa’s Talon books will be delighted.” — Publishers Weekly

“The complex political system is compellingly built, and Mira’s characterization is admirable. Hand to fans of rich world building—and, of course, fans of dragons.”— ALA Booklist

Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created Our Restless World by Benjamin Reiss

"What makes Wild Nights so liberating is that it is descriptive, not prescriptive. It does not hector...It aims, rather, to describe the social history and evolving culture of sleep--through literature, through ethnographies, through old diaries and memoirs and medical texts... [Wild Nights] pops with insight."--Jennifer Senior, New York Times

Once, In Lourdes by Sharon Solwitz

“After writing a spate of short stories, [Sharon Solwitz] returns to the longer form with a ravishing sense of place . . . and a heightened, almost surreal, feel for how intense emotions alter our perception of the world, especially in youth. Solwitz’s surging, many-threaded, complexly insightful tale dramatizes not only personal crises, but also the violence of the infamous 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Timely and timeless.”—Booklist (starred review)

“[An] honest and soul-baring novel about choice, fate, and the consequences of youthful idealism . . . a dark novel that knowingly depicts the confusion of being a teenager and the strong bonds of friendship that form at that young age.”—Publishers Weekly

“In his penetrating new book, Thunder in the Mountains, Daniel J. Sharfstein shows how the meaning of freedom was contested after the Civil War not only in the South but all the way to the Pacific Northwest....Sharfstein's account makes for absorbing reading; it adds immeasurably to our understanding of the complicated, interwoven lives of those who fought for 'progress' east and west.” — Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University

Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor by James M. Scott

Finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in History

"A spellbinding narrative that uses Chinese, Russian and Japanese sources to expand the story of the first American attack on Japan during World War II." —Pulitzer Prize Committee

"When I grew up in the house of a fighter pilot, it was a religious tenet with my father that the Doolittle Raiders were the bravest pilots in the history of flight. James Scott's epic historical work, Target Tokyo, makes that opinion seem almost unassailable. Target Tokyo is one of the most incredible accounts of American military valor I've ever read." —Pat Conroy

Becoming Nicole : The Transformation of an American Family by Amy Ellis Nutt

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PEOPLE AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MEN’S JOURNAL• A STONEWALL HONOR BOOK IN NONFICTION • FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FOR TRANSGENDER NONFICTION

“A profoundly moving true story about one remarkable family’s evolution.”—People

“Fascinating and enlightening.”—Cheryl Strayed

“[Becoming Nicole] generously traces the parameters of parental love . . . delving deep into the case of a single family with a transgender child and discovering in its particulars certain universal truths about the ways children arrive in one’s life already themselves.”—The New York Times Book Review(Editors’ Choice)

The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

“Kertzer has an eye for a story, an ear for the right word, and an instinct for human tragedy. This is a sophisticated blockbuster.”—Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Revolutionary Summer“A fascinating and tragic story.”—The New Yorker

Prince of Darkness: The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street S First Black Millionaire

Winner of the 2016 New York City Book Award

Winner of the 2015 Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Best Book Prize

"This is historical detective work of the highest magnitude... Indeed, the feeling the book left the prize committee with after its 300-plus pages was: how could the story of an American character this fascinating nothave been written before?" —2015 SHEAR Best Book Prize citation

The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict By Austin Reed; Caleb Smith (Editor)

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

“[A] harrowing [portrait] of life behind bars . . . part confession, part jeremiad, part lamentation, part picaresque novel (reminiscent, at times, of Dickens and Defoe).”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times